Late-night licence bid for city club

Late licence: Blitz at its former site on Great Shaw Street. It now occupies for former Frog & Bucket site

Published:06:30Thursday 18 June 2015

A nightclub boss has scaled back his opening hours plans in an attempt to win a late-night licence.

After being knocked back for a 6am closing time, Blitz owner Peter Alexander has returned to council chiefs asking for permission to open until 4.30am.

His club moved to the former Frog and Bucket building to make way for the demolition of the Great Shaw Street site, but he was told it could not have a 6am licence in its new “red zone” location.

Now Mr Alexander is hoping the club will be able to sell alcohol until 4am, and hopes the club will have an “arts and culture” focus.

He said: “We are in and we are preparing it and it’s not far off being ready to go, but we can’t function on the current licence it has.

“Especially when there are pubs in town with a 4am licence, how do we put on a spectacular night of entertainment when people leave us and go to the pub for three hours?”

The former Blitz had a licence until 6am, but councillors voted to block an application for the same at the new building, after police raised objections to the plans in the “cumulative impact policy” area.

Mr Alexander said the club used to run after-parties, which couldn’t happen now a 6am licence has been refused.

He said: “After the meeting we went away and sat down and thought about it.

“One thing we want to do is get heavily involved in arts and culture, bringing interesting things to the city and involving the community in these events.

“There’s a very busy music scene, there are a lot of artists, photographers, a lot of people in the creative sector and we want to put on exhibition days, cultural events, rather than just be a night club.

“The night club bit is the bit that allows us to get to what we want to do.”